My girlfriend and I both watch(ed) "Buffy" and "Angel." She also likes videogames and is bi. Beat that, fanboy playa hater... What's that? I think your mommy is telling you to get off the computer...:)
"Another problem with the cancelation is that another FINE HDTV show is gone. Reality shows dont broadcast in HDTV and Angel takes total advantage of the aspect ratio and the high quality picture. Right now only CSI, Alias and Smallville can even hold a candle to Angel in HDTV quality."
What about Enterprise? Or is it not shown in HDTV? I just naturally assumed that since its broadcast in widescreen format that it was simulcasted in HDTV somewhere. Is Smallville in widescreen format when in HDTV? As for Angel, in syndication (ie., on TNT), they show the episodes in pan & scan, and I don't just mean Season 1 either!:0
Information on the fan campaigns
on
WB Cancels Angel
·
· Score: 1
The WB's cancellation has really cheesed me off. And obviously its cheesed off a lot of the fanbase as well. Here is a link to groups already working to reverse the WB's idiotic business decision:
http://renewangel.com
One of their funnier tactics is to use the WB's own "Angel" themed e-postcards to email the WB about the cancellation.
Here's the link on the WB's website:
http://thewb.com/eCards/Index/0,9767,42801,00.ht ml
Once you select the postcard you want to send to the WB, here is the address:
faces@thewb.com
And don't forget to sign the petition at Petition Online too. Sure, it might be cheesy, but the last time the angry fanboys stood up to Warner Bros., they sent the Superman film screenplay back to the drawing board (and that was after 50k signatures were posted). As it stands right now, there are 21k signatures protesting against the WB decision, and that is only after less than a day of being online. Here's the link if any of you missed it from earlier posts:
http://www.petitiononline.com/ai5d0162/petition. ht ml
If our online community moves fast, I'd be willing to bet the show gets saved. IGN, Chud.com, AICN, UGO, and many other online sources are spreading the word.
And now back to the normally broadcasted crappy WB Network Programming...
"Big studios on the other hand and big graphics HAVE been moving to linux. Disney, pretty much the entire movie and animation industry. On every mention of apps there are literally dozens of posts just on slashdot wishing the apps were available for linux."
I wouldn't bet on that trend continuing. As you can see from this week's business news, Comcast made an offer to purchase Disney. Comcast has worked with Microsoft in the past. If Microsoft were to give a special deal to Comcast to have all of Disney's (and all of Comcast's systems) computers running Windows again for a guarantee of some sort of software licensing for cable set-top boxes at a decent price, you'd see Comcast jump on that offer. The same thing would happen at Time Warner if there weren't any AOLers left to yell "anti-Christ"* at such a suggestion.
*such a statement is used in reference to the beloved labelling of a very well known firm located in Redmond, Washington (no, not Nintendo, and no, not AT&T Wireless) as "The Beast". It is not meant to support or deny any large-scale religion with 2 billion adherants on the planet Terra.
"Apple has more to gain from Microsoft losing marketshare to Linux than themeslves losing marketshare to Linux. Apple is a Unix proponent, and friendly to Linux in that regard."
Not to mention that developing for Linux or Mac OS X should be easier to port things to-and-fro versus between Windows and OS X or Windows and Linux. Increasing market share for Linux or OS X means more resources devoted to open and semi open standards which promote competition versus lending support to closed and proprietary solutions from *The Monopolist.*
"Of course that won't happen. We payed less then and its worth less now, as is to be expected with x86 hardware. If you're only buying things so they stay valuable with time, I'd recommend diamonds, or maybe collecting antiques. I'd rather have something functional and cheap, and if the hardware is even less expensive 5 years down the line? great. that means if I need to replace something it won't cost an arm and my soul."
You can't view pr0n on a diamond, buddy!:)
(plus, you aren't taking into consideration the annual upkeep costs associated with what will go along with that diamond purchase. Nor can you write off the depreciation cost of your mate aging on your 1040...):)
"This is flamebait because people have been crying wolf about Macintosh OS's going x86 for years, much longer than the cries about "BSD is dying" and typically, people will post about Macintosh going to x86 to intice a flamewar from Mac enthusiasts and PC users alike."
Pardon my ignorance on this subject, but couldn't you wrap the KDE desktop around Darwin on x86 and technically have OS X on a PC? Sure, you'd have compatibility issues since OS X has "middleware" between it and its BSD/Mach core but who's sweating such a technicality in this discussion?
Fitting. Considering how Windows won't recognize the year 2100 if a mobo BIOS is reporting that as the current year. $25 to Microsoft support taught me that regarding Windows98.
Never. Remember Microsoft is currently their big supporter, a long with Sun Microsystems? They both took out large contracts with SCO at the beginning of the whole lawsuit business. Both companies know they could sue for damages later (against who? I don't know.) since the contracts could be seen as invalid. "You sold us this product under the guise we were required to buy it, but that's not true".
So, all we need is an over-ambitious green-thumb attorney straight out of lawschool to discover this and bring it out in the open and force the hands of Microsoft and Sun to sue SCO out of existence over it so neither company "appears" guilty in the eyes of the SEC and class action lawsuit specialists. It could be the IT adaptation of the book/movie "The Firm."
First off, I find this whole Pepsi promotion to be ridiculous; almost as ridiculous as Pepsi's "Billion Dollar Giveaway" from last year. Pepsi believes they only will have 10 to 20 million songs redeemed. Then if you read the rules, a single user is limited legally to 200 downloads, and only 10 can be registered per day. Pepsi's limitations are designed to reduce the amount of songs redeemed. Then you have the fact that Joe Blow has to already have iTunes installed on their computer or download it. If you'll notice at the locations that sell Pepsi, you won't find any CD's that you can pick up that has iTunes already loaded, unlike say if AOL ran the promotion.
Next, you have the Tune Recycler campaign. They want people to "recyle" those iTunes caps. Great idea. I myself wanted to do such a thing online before I read about the 200 download cap on the Rules page this morning. So this group will not be able to download en masse, otherwise Pepsi will cut them off. That means they'll parcel the collected entries between various members of their group. They might claim altruistic reasons, but the simple matter-of-fact is that the downloaded files will be on someone's hard drive and therefore it becomes their "property" even under the DRM limitations. So which songs will these people download?
If Tune Recyler was really serious about their campaign, they'd ask that you input your email address for each of the bottle cap numbers you donate to them, and then put it to a vote of their users as to which songs from which artists they should purchase as well as the volume, all based upon voting. But they don't do that now, do they? Sorry, that's not appealing to me.
The Tune Recycler group then goes on about how bad the iTunes Music Store is since it works with the RIAA. Fine. But they also fail to realize that if iTunes becomes really successful, that will tempt bands to dump their labels and deal directly with Apple, cutting out the middle-man. That will be the end of pre-recorded CDs being sold in retail channels. And I expect that the first major band to do such a thing will be Duran Duran with their much publicized reunion album almost complete and the band yet to re-sign with any of the RIAA labels yet. (And no, I'm not counting Annie DeFranco in this equation either) The simple fact is Tune Recycler cannot see what is plainly in sight on the near horizon with their protest mentality.
And yes, you can only play those AAC files on an iPod. How monopolistic of Apple, I'm sure the Tune Recycler folk will say. But of course with Apple's rather lightweight DRM implementation, you can take those AAC files, burn them in CD format, and then turn them into MP3s or OGGs or whatever else you want. The only other commercial choices support Microsoft's tin-can-sounding WMA format, which is NOT a standard no matter how much money Microsoft throws into PR to claim that it is. So if Tune Recycler wishes to view the world in good and evil terms, you have Apple on one end and Microsoft on the other. Which will you choose?
I'd like to end this posting with stating that I want to see our online community really stick it to Pepsi and claim as many of these bottle caps as possible. We have until March 31st to claim the downloads, so let's get to work.
p.s. The Lynxpro does not work for the RIAA, Apple, or PepsiCo. He actually favours Coke and thinks CokeMusic.com is pretty slick although he abhors their embrace of WMA...
p.p.s. The Lynxpro also thinks Tune Recyler is naive in thinking Pepsi is actually paying Apple 99 cents for each claimed download. In all probability, Pepsi is paying the fee sans the percentage of the cost Apple has built-in to pay the credit card companies for the micropayments. Apple might also be waiving their profit markup as well, so in all actuality, Pepsi is probably paying less than 88 cents per redeemed download...
I believe American corporations could already contribute to open source projects and receive R&D tax credits. The only difference would be the open source project would not be "in house" but if they could show they received something from the "donation" then it should work. Then again, I'm not a tax man. Of course, if the open source project was administered by a non-profit foundation, then a monetary contribution would be a charitable tax donation (Mozilla Foundation?)...
"I personally wonder, how many "close source" companies secretly and illegally include GNU-copyrighted code in their products, and sell it without source, violating GPL, but nobody knows they do, just because nobody ever sees the source."
Wasn't Windows's TCP/IP code *lifted* from BSD? However, the BSD license allows for it as long as their credit remains listed, which is how AT&T got in trouble in their Unix vs. BSD fight. Hmmm...how much Linux code is in WindowsXP?
"One thing puzzles me, however. What is Java grande? Was it so shortlived that I missed it?"
Better yet, where is Java Venti?
If you stop and think about it, what could a Sun/Starbucks partnership entail? The Starbucks card working on the SunRay platform, taking your virtual login identity to every Starbucks location you frequent? Even better to realize that just about all Starbucks locations have WiFi hotspots. Oh the conspiracy!
Sure, a Mac is a Mac but there should be a G5 performance comparison with there. After all, not too many Tom's Hardware readers have Itaniums in their home PCs. And with the PowerPC970 (G5) climbing to 3Ghz by March 2004, it should really be included in the article.
If at the very least, they could do speed comparisons on the AMD64, the P4, and the G5 all running various Linux distributions to make it fair. (I'm heavily assuming the Yellow Dog distribution supports the G5)...
There are still unresolved antitrust issues that are ongoing with online digital music distribution. For one, all of the services besides Apple's iTunes is using the WMA file format, straight from Microsoft. You have the RIAA colluding with convicted monopolist Microsoft and its indirect agents. Microsoft itself will be offering its own music store next year. The only fact keeping this from an antitrust complaint is the fact that Apple's iTunes is the only real successful digital store and Apple uses Dolby's AAC format. I'm sure Real has already thought about adding to their antitrust case against Microsoft with the facts that none of the iTunes competitors are offering their music in Real Player format(s). I'd also lay money down that Real will want to exploit the goodwill it has with Nokia and the other Symbian mobile phone partners in distributing digital music via cell phones with Real Player software.
"What if we've had the mark of the beast all along and it was called DNA?"
That's almost circular logic. According to John's "Revelation," the Mark of the Beast (666 or 999) had to be accepted by the person taking the mark. That suggestion of yours would mean that the immortal soul would have to agree to take the Mark as a condition of entering the material world. Of course, I suppose a creative religious scholar could wrap that concept around with "original sin." Then the Mark itself would lie dormant, the evil that is within all mankind, and it would be "activated" (like a web browser cookie) if that particular soul chose the *wrong* side in the "last days."
Personally, I believe it would be in the best interest of humanity as a whole to have a DNA record of everyone, period. We have geneology records, birth and death certificates, so why not go the extra step. It certainly would solve all the various paternity issues that plague society. Perhaps we'd also find other genes that haven't been discovered in the Human Genome Project since we're talking about using 300 million people as the template if we were to collect DNA from all living Americans. Just imagine the fun society could have when abandoned cemetaries are reclaimed...
I'm going to address some of the concerns you highlighted:
"1: "trying to get a steal of a deal". The customers are NOT trying to steal. They want what was prominently advertised in more than one place, from supplier and retailer."
The consumer has a personal responsibility to investigate such "too good to be true" advertising schemes. There is the famous statement "buyer beware." So yes, while this is the fault of Replay itself, perhaps the consumers should've doubted the claims of the company now in control of Replay considering its bankrupted the two prior companies that owned it. Microsoft, with its $50 billion + money in the bank did not do such a promotion with UltimateTV; and TiVo has increased their subscription prices over the years in an effort to break even. Therefore, the offer is too good to be true. Now, it will be up to the consumers burned by this company to report them to their various State Attorney Generals as well as the Better Business Bureau to take some form of action against them.
"2: "Offering 3 years of free service.... is a business model that won't work". What the offer means to the business bottom line is irrelevant to the customer. If the supplier advertises it, the supplier must be prepared to deliver it. Besides you can't know this "won't work" unless you're an employee for the company making the offer. HMMMMM?????"
The business bottom line is completely relevant to the consumer. Would you have bought a Beta VCR if the writing on the wall was that Sony was going to dump it? Would you buy a Mac if Apple's financials were in dire straights? Nope. The same goes with Replay. TiVo has in November just passed the 1 million subscribers mark. Analysts have been saying that TiVo would have to hit 1 million subscribers to break even and finally generate a profit. TiVo heavily subsidizes their own hardware they manufacture and rely on mass subscriptions to pay it back. Replay is doing the same thing. However, TiVo has 900,000 more subscribers than Replay. So how can Replay make money? Replay doesn't even have the promotional ties with the Hollywood studios (like TiVo does) to stream *forced* advertisements onto the machines. So they don't even have supplemental revenues. They are relying on the coffers of D&M to pay for everything, just as they drove SonicBlue into bankruptcy before them, and the original Replay company. So yes, it does matter about the business model whether the company can sustain in the marketplace. After all, you don't want a lame duck machine if the company goes bust again. Or in the computer market, just reference what happened to 3dfx. You can't really get WindowsXP and recent DirectX drivers for the Voodoo3/4/5 line now, can you?
"4: Stuff about Replay's competition: Irrelevant."
Quite the opposite. It is always important to know about the competition of a certain product, especially so you know you'll have some form of customer service to rely upon if your machine goes bad...see my statements in the prior paragraph for more detail...
Nobody would be going through this trouble if they weren't trying to get a "steal" of a deal. Offering 3 years of service for free on a cheap machine is a business model that won't work. It sounds like a tactic to just empty the inventory and make some quick cash, ala SCO and its "pump-and-dump" strategy with the markets. Either that or the new owners of Replay thought it would be an easy way to drive up their installed user base to ensure retailers would still carry the product. As it stands, TiVo has 1 million subscribers (I'm not certain if that is counting the DirecTiVos in that number) and Replay has maybe 100,000 + at best after being on the market for four years and buried two previous companies. TiVo has beaten Microsoft's UltimateTV. As it stands, TiVo's only competitor is the inferior DishPlayer PVR which has a 1 million user base because Dish Network was giving away the units as part of their package. 2004 will bring the HD based TiVos from DirecTV. So please, for those Slashdotters who aren't planning on building their own PVRs based upon MythTV, please spread the word that TiVo is the name of the PVR game.
Did anyone on Slashdot think of the possibility of Microsoft turning over the IP addresses assigned to the email addresses entered for their Linux survey directly over to SCO? Seems like that would be an easy way of compiling a list of direct end-users to sue RIAA-style...
Then again, I'm an avid conspiracist.:)
Here's a link to an article on the survey courtesy of Yahoo:
DirecTV will be showing their HD-based TiVo DVR at January's CES. Pictures have already been leaked over the net, but I don't have the exact link. So that rather dampens the newsworthiness of Dish Network's wanna-be TiVo.
With Rupert Murdoch taking control of DirecTV shortly, expect a price war against both Dish Network AND the cable companies. I believe there was a speculative article linked to Drudge the other day about that.
I myself am tired of Comcast. Here in Sacramento, they are raising our rates again, with the pathetic excuse for them to recupe their investment in expanding pay-per-view. I don't use PPV and I believe it would've been a wiser investment to offer set-top boxes with TiVo built in. Now if DirecTV would offer a decent broadband service using leased space over the cable lines, that would be the winning choice...
Slashdot Mirror
"You guys really do need to find a girlfriend."
:)
My girlfriend and I both watch(ed) "Buffy" and "Angel." She also likes videogames and is bi. Beat that, fanboy playa hater... What's that? I think your mommy is telling you to get off the computer...
"Another problem with the cancelation is that another FINE HDTV show is gone. Reality shows dont broadcast in HDTV and Angel takes total advantage of the aspect ratio and the high quality picture. Right now only CSI, Alias and Smallville can even hold a candle to Angel in HDTV quality."
:0
What about Enterprise? Or is it not shown in HDTV? I just naturally assumed that since its broadcast in widescreen format that it was simulcasted in HDTV somewhere. Is Smallville in widescreen format when in HDTV? As for Angel, in syndication (ie., on TNT), they show the episodes in pan & scan, and I don't just mean Season 1 either!
The WB's cancellation has really cheesed me off. And obviously its cheesed off a lot of the fanbase as well. Here is a link to groups already working to reverse the WB's idiotic business decision:
t ml
. ht ml
http://renewangel.com
One of their funnier tactics is to use the WB's own "Angel" themed e-postcards to email the WB about the cancellation.
Here's the link on the WB's website:
http://thewb.com/eCards/Index/0,9767,42801,00.h
Once you select the postcard you want to send to the WB, here is the address:
faces@thewb.com
And don't forget to sign the petition at Petition Online too. Sure, it might be cheesy, but the last time the angry fanboys stood up to Warner Bros., they sent the Superman film screenplay back to the drawing board (and that was after 50k signatures were posted). As it stands right now, there are 21k signatures protesting against the WB decision, and that is only after less than a day of being online. Here's the link if any of you missed it from earlier posts:
http://www.petitiononline.com/ai5d0162/petition
If our online community moves fast, I'd be willing to bet the show gets saved. IGN, Chud.com, AICN, UGO, and many other online sources are spreading the word.
And now back to the normally broadcasted crappy WB Network Programming...
Oops. Wait. Wrong freedom fest...
"I'm a clueless newbie and proud of it!
Lycoris, Lindows, Xandros"
You forgot Mandrake, even if it is built upon Red Hat.
"Big studios on the other hand and big graphics HAVE been moving to linux. Disney, pretty much the entire movie and animation industry. On every mention of apps there are literally dozens of posts just on slashdot wishing the apps were available for linux."
I wouldn't bet on that trend continuing. As you can see from this week's business news, Comcast made an offer to purchase Disney. Comcast has worked with Microsoft in the past. If Microsoft were to give a special deal to Comcast to have all of Disney's (and all of Comcast's systems) computers running Windows again for a guarantee of some sort of software licensing for cable set-top boxes at a decent price, you'd see Comcast jump on that offer. The same thing would happen at Time Warner if there weren't any AOLers left to yell "anti-Christ"* at such a suggestion.
*such a statement is used in reference to the beloved labelling of a very well known firm located in Redmond, Washington (no, not Nintendo, and no, not AT&T Wireless) as "The Beast". It is not meant to support or deny any large-scale religion with 2 billion adherants on the planet Terra.
"Apple has more to gain from Microsoft losing marketshare to Linux than themeslves losing marketshare to Linux. Apple is a Unix proponent, and friendly to Linux in that regard."
Not to mention that developing for Linux or Mac OS X should be easier to port things to-and-fro versus between Windows and OS X or Windows and Linux. Increasing market share for Linux or OS X means more resources devoted to open and semi open standards which promote competition versus lending support to closed and proprietary solutions from *The Monopolist.*
"Of course that won't happen. We payed less then and its worth less now, as is to be expected with x86 hardware. If you're only buying things so they stay valuable with time, I'd recommend diamonds, or maybe collecting antiques. I'd rather have something functional and cheap, and if the hardware is even less expensive 5 years down the line? great. that means if I need to replace something it won't cost an arm and my soul."
:)
:)
You can't view pr0n on a diamond, buddy!
(plus, you aren't taking into consideration the annual upkeep costs associated with what will go along with that diamond purchase. Nor can you write off the depreciation cost of your mate aging on your 1040...)
"This is flamebait because people have been crying wolf about Macintosh OS's going x86 for years, much longer than the cries about "BSD is dying" and typically, people will post about Macintosh going to x86 to intice a flamewar from Mac enthusiasts and PC users alike."
Pardon my ignorance on this subject, but couldn't you wrap the KDE desktop around Darwin on x86 and technically have OS X on a PC? Sure, you'd have compatibility issues since OS X has "middleware" between it and its BSD/Mach core but who's sweating such a technicality in this discussion?
"And in 2102 we'll be on 100% of all machines!!"
Fitting. Considering how Windows won't recognize the year 2100 if a mobo BIOS is reporting that as the current year. $25 to Microsoft support taught me that regarding Windows98.
Never. Remember Microsoft is currently their big supporter, a long with Sun Microsystems? They both took out large contracts with SCO at the beginning of the whole lawsuit business. Both companies know they could sue for damages later (against who? I don't know.) since the contracts could be seen as invalid. "You sold us this product under the guise we were required to buy it, but that's not true".
So, all we need is an over-ambitious green-thumb attorney straight out of lawschool to discover this and bring it out in the open and force the hands of Microsoft and Sun to sue SCO out of existence over it so neither company "appears" guilty in the eyes of the SEC and class action lawsuit specialists. It could be the IT adaptation of the book/movie "The Firm."
First off, I find this whole Pepsi promotion to be ridiculous; almost as ridiculous as Pepsi's "Billion Dollar Giveaway" from last year. Pepsi believes they only will have 10 to 20 million songs redeemed. Then if you read the rules, a single user is limited legally to 200 downloads, and only 10 can be registered per day. Pepsi's limitations are designed to reduce the amount of songs redeemed. Then you have the fact that Joe Blow has to already have iTunes installed on their computer or download it. If you'll notice at the locations that sell Pepsi, you won't find any CD's that you can pick up that has iTunes already loaded, unlike say if AOL ran the promotion.
Next, you have the Tune Recycler campaign. They want people to "recyle" those iTunes caps. Great idea. I myself wanted to do such a thing online before I read about the 200 download cap on the Rules page this morning. So this group will not be able to download en masse, otherwise Pepsi will cut them off. That means they'll parcel the collected entries between various members of their group. They might claim altruistic reasons, but the simple matter-of-fact is that the downloaded files will be on someone's hard drive and therefore it becomes their "property" even under the DRM limitations. So which songs will these people download?
If Tune Recyler was really serious about their campaign, they'd ask that you input your email address for each of the bottle cap numbers you donate to them, and then put it to a vote of their users as to which songs from which artists they should purchase as well as the volume, all based upon voting. But they don't do that now, do they? Sorry, that's not appealing to me.
The Tune Recycler group then goes on about how bad the iTunes Music Store is since it works with the RIAA. Fine. But they also fail to realize that if iTunes becomes really successful, that will tempt bands to dump their labels and deal directly with Apple, cutting out the middle-man. That will be the end of pre-recorded CDs being sold in retail channels. And I expect that the first major band to do such a thing will be Duran Duran with their much publicized reunion album almost complete and the band yet to re-sign with any of the RIAA labels yet. (And no, I'm not counting Annie DeFranco in this equation either) The simple fact is Tune Recycler cannot see what is plainly in sight on the near horizon with their protest mentality.
And yes, you can only play those AAC files on an iPod. How monopolistic of Apple, I'm sure the Tune Recycler folk will say. But of course with Apple's rather lightweight DRM implementation, you can take those AAC files, burn them in CD format, and then turn them into MP3s or OGGs or whatever else you want. The only other commercial choices support Microsoft's tin-can-sounding WMA format, which is NOT a standard no matter how much money Microsoft throws into PR to claim that it is. So if Tune Recycler wishes to view the world in good and evil terms, you have Apple on one end and Microsoft on the other. Which will you choose?
I'd like to end this posting with stating that I want to see our online community really stick it to Pepsi and claim as many of these bottle caps as possible. We have until March 31st to claim the downloads, so let's get to work.
p.s. The Lynxpro does not work for the RIAA, Apple, or PepsiCo. He actually favours Coke and thinks CokeMusic.com is pretty slick although he abhors their embrace of WMA...
p.p.s. The Lynxpro also thinks Tune Recyler is naive in thinking Pepsi is actually paying Apple 99 cents for each claimed download. In all probability, Pepsi is paying the fee sans the percentage of the cost Apple has built-in to pay the credit card companies for the micropayments. Apple might also be waiving their profit markup as well, so in all actuality, Pepsi is probably paying less than 88 cents per redeemed download...
Hmmm...I thought this was done years ago... Its called adultfriendfinder.com
I believe American corporations could already contribute to open source projects and receive R&D tax credits. The only difference would be the open source project would not be "in house" but if they could show they received something from the "donation" then it should work. Then again, I'm not a tax man. Of course, if the open source project was administered by a non-profit foundation, then a monetary contribution would be a charitable tax donation (Mozilla Foundation?)...
"I personally wonder, how many "close source" companies secretly and illegally include GNU-copyrighted code in their products, and sell it without source, violating GPL, but nobody knows they do, just because nobody ever sees the source."
Wasn't Windows's TCP/IP code *lifted* from BSD? However, the BSD license allows for it as long as their credit remains listed, which is how AT&T got in trouble in their Unix vs. BSD fight. Hmmm...how much Linux code is in WindowsXP?
"One thing puzzles me, however. What is Java grande? Was it so shortlived that I missed it?"
Better yet, where is Java Venti?
If you stop and think about it, what could a Sun/Starbucks partnership entail? The Starbucks card working on the SunRay platform, taking your virtual login identity to every Starbucks location you frequent? Even better to realize that just about all Starbucks locations have WiFi hotspots. Oh the conspiracy!
Sure, a Mac is a Mac but there should be a G5 performance comparison with there. After all, not too many Tom's Hardware readers have Itaniums in their home PCs. And with the PowerPC970 (G5) climbing to 3Ghz by March 2004, it should really be included in the article.
If at the very least, they could do speed comparisons on the AMD64, the P4, and the G5 all running various Linux distributions to make it fair. (I'm heavily assuming the Yellow Dog distribution supports the G5)...
There are still unresolved antitrust issues that are ongoing with online digital music distribution. For one, all of the services besides Apple's iTunes is using the WMA file format, straight from Microsoft. You have the RIAA colluding with convicted monopolist Microsoft and its indirect agents. Microsoft itself will be offering its own music store next year. The only fact keeping this from an antitrust complaint is the fact that Apple's iTunes is the only real successful digital store and Apple uses Dolby's AAC format. I'm sure Real has already thought about adding to their antitrust case against Microsoft with the facts that none of the iTunes competitors are offering their music in Real Player format(s). I'd also lay money down that Real will want to exploit the goodwill it has with Nokia and the other Symbian mobile phone partners in distributing digital music via cell phones with Real Player software.
"What if we've had the mark of the beast all along and it was called DNA?"
That's almost circular logic. According to John's "Revelation," the Mark of the Beast (666 or 999) had to be accepted by the person taking the mark. That suggestion of yours would mean that the immortal soul would have to agree to take the Mark as a condition of entering the material world. Of course, I suppose a creative religious scholar could wrap that concept around with "original sin." Then the Mark itself would lie dormant, the evil that is within all mankind, and it would be "activated" (like a web browser cookie) if that particular soul chose the *wrong* side in the "last days."
Personally, I believe it would be in the best interest of humanity as a whole to have a DNA record of everyone, period. We have geneology records, birth and death certificates, so why not go the extra step. It certainly would solve all the various paternity issues that plague society. Perhaps we'd also find other genes that haven't been discovered in the Human Genome Project since we're talking about using 300 million people as the template if we were to collect DNA from all living Americans. Just imagine the fun society could have when abandoned cemetaries are reclaimed...
I'm going to address some of the concerns you highlighted:
"1: "trying to get a steal of a deal". The customers are NOT trying to steal. They want what was prominently advertised in more than one place, from supplier and retailer."
The consumer has a personal responsibility to investigate such "too good to be true" advertising schemes. There is the famous statement "buyer beware." So yes, while this is the fault of Replay itself, perhaps the consumers should've doubted the claims of the company now in control of Replay considering its bankrupted the two prior companies that owned it. Microsoft, with its $50 billion + money in the bank did not do such a promotion with UltimateTV; and TiVo has increased their subscription prices over the years in an effort to break even. Therefore, the offer is too good to be true. Now, it will be up to the consumers burned by this company to report them to their various State Attorney Generals as well as the Better Business Bureau to take some form of action against them.
"2: "Offering 3 years of free service
The business bottom line is completely relevant to the consumer. Would you have bought a Beta VCR if the writing on the wall was that Sony was going to dump it? Would you buy a Mac if Apple's financials were in dire straights? Nope. The same goes with Replay. TiVo has in November just passed the 1 million subscribers mark. Analysts have been saying that TiVo would have to hit 1 million subscribers to break even and finally generate a profit. TiVo heavily subsidizes their own hardware they manufacture and rely on mass subscriptions to pay it back. Replay is doing the same thing. However, TiVo has 900,000 more subscribers than Replay. So how can Replay make money? Replay doesn't even have the promotional ties with the Hollywood studios (like TiVo does) to stream *forced* advertisements onto the machines. So they don't even have supplemental revenues. They are relying on the coffers of D&M to pay for everything, just as they drove SonicBlue into bankruptcy before them, and the original Replay company. So yes, it does matter about the business model whether the company can sustain in the marketplace. After all, you don't want a lame duck machine if the company goes bust again. Or in the computer market, just reference what happened to 3dfx. You can't really get WindowsXP and recent DirectX drivers for the Voodoo3/4/5 line now, can you?
"4: Stuff about Replay's competition: Irrelevant."
Quite the opposite. It is always important to know about the competition of a certain product, especially so you know you'll have some form of customer service to rely upon if your machine goes bad...see my statements in the prior paragraph for more detail...
Nobody would be going through this trouble if they weren't trying to get a "steal" of a deal. Offering 3 years of service for free on a cheap machine is a business model that won't work. It sounds like a tactic to just empty the inventory and make some quick cash, ala SCO and its "pump-and-dump" strategy with the markets. Either that or the new owners of Replay thought it would be an easy way to drive up their installed user base to ensure retailers would still carry the product. As it stands, TiVo has 1 million subscribers (I'm not certain if that is counting the DirecTiVos in that number) and Replay has maybe 100,000 + at best after being on the market for four years and buried two previous companies. TiVo has beaten Microsoft's UltimateTV. As it stands, TiVo's only competitor is the inferior DishPlayer PVR which has a 1 million user base because Dish Network was giving away the units as part of their package. 2004 will bring the HD based TiVos from DirecTV. So please, for those Slashdotters who aren't planning on building their own PVRs based upon MythTV, please spread the word that TiVo is the name of the PVR game.
Did anyone on Slashdot think of the possibility of Microsoft turning over the IP addresses assigned to the email addresses entered for their Linux survey directly over to SCO? Seems like that would be an easy way of compiling a list of direct end-users to sue RIAA-style...
:)
= 75 &ncid=75&e=1&u=/nf/20031224/tc_nf/2291 5
Then again, I'm an avid conspiracist.
Here's a link to an article on the survey courtesy of Yahoo:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid
Here's the link to the DirecTV HD TiVo:
http://www.cesweb.org/shared_files/innovations/
DirecTV will be showing their HD-based TiVo DVR at January's CES. Pictures have already been leaked over the net, but I don't have the exact link. So that rather dampens the newsworthiness of Dish Network's wanna-be TiVo.
With Rupert Murdoch taking control of DirecTV shortly, expect a price war against both Dish Network AND the cable companies. I believe there was a speculative article linked to Drudge the other day about that.
I myself am tired of Comcast. Here in Sacramento, they are raising our rates again, with the pathetic excuse for them to recupe their investment in expanding pay-per-view. I don't use PPV and I believe it would've been a wiser investment to offer set-top boxes with TiVo built in. Now if DirecTV would offer a decent broadband service using leased space over the cable lines, that would be the winning choice...
I'd just like to know if anyone has tried running Smoothwall with the Vonage service, and with how much success?